Passage works: Ruth Beckermanns art [Hardcover]

Passage Worksis the first book-length English language critical analysis of the transdisciplinary work of the Austrian film-maker, writer, and artist Ruth Beckermann (b. 1952, Vienna). Beckermanns works interrogate identity and geography as formations of the intersections between the past and the contemporary. Taking as her central topics Austria and its history and politics, her own identity as a Jewish woman, and the contemporary global geopolitics of migration and displacement, Beckermann develops wider meditations in film, art, and writing on the persistence of European memory, and the meanings of Europe itself; on borders, migrations, and identities; on memories, traumas, and traditions; on the image as marker of presence and absence, repository of the traces of historical violence; and on thepassageas metaphor for a range of physical, psychological, and ideological movements defining the complexities of contemporary cosmopolitan identities.GBThe first English-language book on the work of Viennese artist, film-maker, and writer Ruth Beckermann., addressing all Beckermanns major works and offering innovative critical readings.

Patricia Allmer is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Edinburgh
John Sears is a freelance scholar

Passage Worksexplores the works of contemporary Austrian filmmaker, artist, and writer Ruth Beckermann (b. Vienna, 1952). Across her work in multiple media, Beckermann interrogates and critiques identity and geography as complex, shifting formations produced by multiple intersections between the past and the contemporary.

Spanning over four decades, Beckermanns abiding thematic concern focuses on Austrias central role in an expanding Europe, its complex history and politics, her own identity and sense of unbelonging as a post-war Jewish woman, and the contemporary global issues of migration and displacement. Her work extends these themes into wider melã